Samsung is getting serious about prying the Galaxy Note 7
back from customers. The company has issued a recall, worked with
carriers, and made several announcements concerning the device. Now,
it’s going to try a new trick — limiting the battery capacity to 60%
charge.

For now, the over-the-air update will be
confined to South Korea, where Samsung took out a front page ad in the
Seoul Shinmun, a South Korean newspaper. The ad notes that the devices
will be limited to just 60% charge, specifically to drive users towards
swapping out their hardware. It is a measure to put consumer safety
first, but “we apologize for causing inconvenience,” according to the AP.

Samsung is reportedly in talks with mobile
carriers worldwide to discuss pushing similar updates to other devices.
The issue underscores one of the problems with smartphones in general.
With Apple or Microsoft, the company responsible for the operating
system also has the ability to push updates for it. Both OS developers
have taken steps in recent years to ensure all users are protected by
security updates and bug fixes whether they want to be or not.
(Microsoft’s policies with Windows 10 have been controversial for
pushing non-security updates and a general lack of communication around
patches — security updates, in and of themselves, aren’t controversial).
The Android ecosystem is much more fragmented and no single company
claims responsibility for pushing updates to consumers.

It’s not clear if Samsung is making this
change simply to reduce the risk of overheating or because it’ll drive
consumers into shops. Likely it’s a mixture of both. While the company
initially downplayed the risk and told The Wall Street Journal
that only a handful of devices had been affected, we can’t remember the
last time any company went to such lengths to recall devices. Sony’s
battery recall from a few years back when lithium-ion battery tech was
newer and less proven was significant. But Samsung has pulled out all
the stops to drive consumers into stores to replace their hardware.

Either this problem is larger than the company initially thought, or it’s decided to be extremely
proactive with its outreach. If the former, the company ought to say
something concrete about the issue — treating this as a face-saving
measure isn’t going to work if high-profile failures keep happening. If
the latter, then good for Samsung. Hitting battery life is fairly likely
to drive people back to stores, and hopefully the company can roll the
fix out to more than just South Korea.